1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to electronic forms, in particular a network based application service for creation and management of electronic forms.
2. Description of Related Art
Over 200 billion paper forms are completed in the US alone each year. Even though there are tremendous advantages to using electronic instead of paper forms, a very small percentage of forms are electronic today because it is been time consuming, difficult and expensive to create and publish an electronic form that can be completed by form users electronically and transmit the data into a database or other application. This invention allows for the rapid and cost-effective design, development, and deployment of the electronic version of paper forms, the recording of data on those forms into a database, electronic routing of the forms for approval or problem resolution, transmission of the data into an external system, and reporting of the data gathered.
Paper forms are ubiquitous and are used by government entities, corporations and individuals to gather information. Paper forms have multiple problems that limit their effectiveness and efficiency. First, the form has to be delivered to the form user; sometimes the form can be delivered over the internet but often it is mailed which is time consuming and expensive. Second, even if a form is well designed, form users often forget to complete required form fields or enter information into form fields that is not valid, such as an invalid zip code. In this case the form may be sent back and forth multiple times or require a phone call with the form user until it is complete. Third, it is difficult to eliminate previous versions of forms in circulation which often means firm users complete an old version of a form which does not contain all of the necessary form fields and data; this requires the current version of the form sent back to the form user, restarting, delaying and increasing the cost of the entire process. Fourth, the completed form has to be sent back to the organization that authored the form; this either requires additional mailing time and expense or requires the form user to have a scanner and know how to scan and email the completed form. Fifth, even though the form user just entered it into the paper form, often that same information needs to be reentered into a database or other application by the form author as part of a larger business process. Sixth, it is difficult to know if the person(s) that signed a form are the actual person(s) claimed. Lastly, it is difficult for the form author to know, amongst all form users that have received the forms, who has or has not completed the forms and whether they have been successfully submitted and completed.
Various techniques have been employed to try to solve these problems. Many form authors have created forms that are displayed in a web browser to gather information. While this approach can solve some of the problems mentioned above, the web pages need to be developed by a code programmer with the requisite skills which is time consuming and expensive. Much of the functionality required to make the experience simple for the form user requires very difficult code level programming, adding to the effort, cost and timeline. Forms on web pages also do not have the look and feel of paper forms which makes them difficult for form users to complete properly. Additionally, an entire infrastructure needs to be built to accomplish the delivery, approval routing and management of the forms.
Alternatively, one or more companies such as Adobe Systems, Inc. have developed packaged software that allows for the creation of electronic forms with the look and feel of paper forms. However, the approach utilized by these companies is a decentralized model that assumes form users receive forms anonymously in an email or download them from a website. This precludes the ability of the software to authenticate users in advance of form submittal, requiring them to authenticate themselves each time a form is submitted. Authentication is generally either from a digital certificate which is impractical, difficult and time consuming for individuals to obtain and often does not guarantee authenticity (which is why it is rarely used) or by requiring the form user to print, sign, and mail the form back, defeating the purpose of an electronic version of the form. These systems also do not ensure that the latest version of the form is utilized, which can greatly increase the effort for both form users as well as the organization that receives the completed forms if an prior version of the form is submitted; often the process needs to start all over again since a current version of the form has to be sent to the form user after they have already completed and submitted the previous version. Additionally, this software does not allow for forms to be electronically routed back to form users to correct missing or erroneous information while clearly identifying the missing or erroneous information or to track form status under such a scenario to understand and manage the receipt of all outstanding forms. Lastly, these systems also require advanced code programming skills not available to most form authors to accomplish critical tasks such as form data validation, and is time consuming and expensive to create forms. It is therefore only practical for the largest companies and government agencies that receive thousands of the same forms repeatedly.
Because web forms and this packaged software have not solved these critical problems, most forms today are still paper-based as they are faster and easier to develop and deploy with far less effort. Even though data on the forms has to be reentered into a database or other back-end system, it is still less effort than utilizing any of the software descried above.
There remains a need to provide a network based application to facilitate users to manage form data and creation, storage, update and distribution of electronic forms.